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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29744325">soot tags</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/errorryx/pseuds/errorryx'>errorryx</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Blood Vines, Gen, Ghost Wilbur Soot Angst, Ghost Wilbur Soot-Centric, Ghosts, Playlist</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 21:47:12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,781</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29744325</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/errorryx/pseuds/errorryx</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a quiet night on the Dream SMP, and a lonely ghost laments on the state of things, leaving his mark wherever he goes.</p><p>Accompanied by a playlist to listen to as you read.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Wilbur Soot &amp; Phil Watson, Wilbur Soot &amp; TommyInnit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>48</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>soot tags</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I've made a short playlist that's paced alongside the story. It's very simple, just tracks from Minecraft and Undertale OST. you can find it <a href="https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4qyqxXHvX02pm7yuR3FiDk?si=jfgqRZSTRGGJcApjoxaD7A">here</a>. It's not necessary to enjoy the fic, but I think it adds to the experience. There are five sections, one for each song, and each section (ideally) takes a similar amount of time to read as the duration of the song.</p><p>The altered lyrics referenced in here are from Paint it Black by the Rolling Stones.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strike> <em>premonition</em> </strike>
</p><p> </p><p>They just kept building and building, up to the sky, down below the ground, structures spilling out in every direction, halfway finished and fully abandoned. Beautiful disasters, labors of love that had gone and left these stones here to rot. Everywhere, things secreted joy and misery and disgust.</p><p>Many of the SMP’s structures fell to fire. The lemon trees, the Eiffel tower, Tubbo’s first house. Those were the places Ghostbur avoided at all costs. The fire left scars. The fire left webs. The fire left reminders. </p><p>The skylines of the Dream SMP had changed again and again. Ghostbur remembered the reverse coaster, one of many hideous structures that had been rightfully destroyed by people making an effort to “fix” the server. Was it stupid that he missed it? Probably, but he did anyway. It was a reminder of a better time, when people did stupid, impulsive things, but in a way that created something instead of destroying it. Creation always involved destruction, but destruction did not always involve creation. Sometimes it involved letting the ashes shrivel and dissolve, and the smoke drift up towards the sun.</p><p>Ghostbur remembered that impulse, if only on days like today. The urge to take what he’d made and reduce it to nothing but ash and dust and misery, to make the world reflect what he felt on the inside, so everyone could see it and know what had happened to him. He didn’t feel it, but he saw it as if he was looking at it through glass. There was an element of creation in that, too. His destruction of L’Manberg had been destruction with a purpose, an unfinished symphony, a terrible, soul-crushing tragedy. It was the end to a story, or it should have been, but a beautiful and poetic death wasn’t good enough of a fate for his country. </p><p>The black grid above what had once been L’Manberg now, the endless crater it had become, knew nothing of creation. There was no joy in the tragedy of its demise, not like there had been when it fell to his hands. Outside tyrants reveling in destruction for destruction’s sake- there was no poetry in that. </p><p> </p><p>
  <em> <strike>subwoofer lullaby</strike> </em>
</p><p> </p><p>Ghostbur wasn’t drawn to the remains of L’Manberg as he was to Pogtopia, because when he descended down the stairs to the ravine in which he and Tommy had spent so many cold, lonely nights shivering by each other’s sides, he heard a faint, tinkling music that L’Manberg lacked. It was a song of comfort. Its melody wrapped heavy arms soaked in blood around him, and he felt at home. Pogtopia had been a real place, a place where he had felt like a part of a whole. It was all still there, the stone walls that had crushed him between them, driven him mad with longing. It was all still there to marvel and to despise.</p><p>He left streaks of blue on every button he could reach. Fundy’s buttons everywhere may have been intended as a lighthearted prank, but they had become so much more. Each one was a reminder of his madness, each one was wired to blow.</p><p>He made his way to Techno’s old secret base, but didn’t bother to enter. Techno didn’t build things that could be homes unless Phil was involved. He built cold walls and empty spaces, places that might as well be abandoned even when they were filled with people. </p><p>He followed the path their army had taken on their way to defeat Manberg and take back what was theirs, leaving a trail of blue in his wake. So many people had been so full of hope that morning. Ghostbur couldn’t remember it himself, only retellings that he’d written in his books, so he must not have been one of them. It didn’t surprise him. Alivebur had lost all hope long before the war.</p><p>But, he was being self-centered. Not all of the creation and ruin was centered around Alivebur. Plenty of it was the fault of other people. Karl was certainly a culprit, with his habit of building homes and cities for himself, and abandoning them on a whim. Ghostbur stood at the gate to Party Park, watching the llama coaster circle around and around. This, too, untouched as it was by the explosion, was cold and empty. It had once been overshadowed by El Rapids, formerly known as Mexican L’Manberg, both places now decidedly ignored, forgotten, reduced to nostalgia. The wind howled through the hollow valley El Rapids had been constructed over, and despite being dead, Ghostbur shivered. He released his blue from the peak of the dark pyramid at the top of the hill and let the breeze take it.</p><p>Boomerville was downwind, on the receiving end of much of the blue snow. When was the last time anyone had seen Vikkstar or Lazar? They were probably put off by the constant war and the complete destruction of the neighborhood property value. Only their sheep pen remained. Ghostbur pitied the animals, but none of them were Friend, so none of them mattered. The life had left their marble eyes long ago anyway.</p><p>On his way to Snowchester, he passed the distant giant staircase ascending to nowhere. Why had it been created? What was its purpose? Did it matter? Floating above the soul sand highway he was too poor to use, Ghostbur couldn’t come up with the memory. It was hardly the first time.</p><p>Snowchester was not nearly as full of life as it should have been for a place with walls and beautifully constructed houses and active residents. It felt artificial, a Christmas village full of porcelain snow, porcelain trees, porcelain people. The nuclear launch pad in the distance filled Ghostbur’s stomach with dread. He pulled more blue from his inventory and clung to it desperately until the feeling faded, spreading blue through Tubbo’s house and everywhere else.</p><p>He was struck with mining fatigue on his way back. It didn’t matter. He wasn’t planning on doing any mining. He ignored the prison, a place built to be hard to look at, even if it was so grand and majestic. There was nothing it had to offer but misery and empty holes where misery could go.</p><p>Other people often lamented that Ghostbur must be terribly lonely as the only ghost on the server, but really, he reflected as he walked down the Prime Path, leaving blue footprints with every step, the server was full to the brim with ghosts. Every empty tower, every finished project that sat ignored haunted the land on which it was built. He followed the path all the way to the community house, the oldest ghost of all. Someone, Puffy, probably, had tried to breathe some life back into it, and structurally she’d done an excellent job. It would look inviting enough to a newcomer, and it was reminiscent of the old structure without being a carbon copy. But until people called it a home and gathered amid its walls again, it would be as lifeless as Wilbur Soot.</p><p>He hadn’t been there when the community house was at its peak. The walls knew it, and encouraged him to leave. He didn’t have anywhere else he wanted to go, but he complied, leaving his blue to coat the walls and climbing the stairs to the nether portal. </p><p>The main entrance was lovely now, but as soon as he stepped out, it was chaos in all directions. People had built bridges over the lava in any direction they chose, rejecting structural integrity for convenience. Ghostbur passed blue to every piglin, zombie or otherwise, he saw, and in their mindless wanderings, they left trails of blue everywhere, the closest thing to a river the nether would ever see.</p><p>He longed to sleep once more inside the river, but the way he was built, the way he was made, the water would only burn him to dust.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strike> <em>it's raining somewhere else</em> </strike>
</p><p> </p><p>There were places in the SMP that preferred to keep their distance. They separated themselves, connected only by threads, avoiding the messy knots of the larger area of the server, and as a result they managed to stay relatively pristine. They didn't deserve the mess, but neither did anywhere else, so Ghostbur would bring it to them.</p><p>He drenched Karl's mushroom kingdom in blue. It looked so nice against the red, so lovely. What was the point of this place, anyway? Karl would stay here a month or two and move on to the next grand dream. It would be out here among the flowers, alone. Ghostbur was doing it a favor. His blue was good company, he'd been told.</p><p>He visited Foolish’s grand pyramid next, and he was genuinely impressed. Not even Philza had attempted a project of this scale on the server. Foolish seemed dedicated enough to see it all to completion, but in his melancholy mood, Ghostbur could only think of what would happen once he was done. Would he abandon this too? Would it sit empty? Even now, it couldn’t attract the number of visitors that it deserved, and Ghostbur didn’t trust that it would improve. What was the point of building a masterpiece that no one would care about?</p><p>He left blue at the front steps, feeling as if he shouldn’t disrupt the inside. There was no history here, but something about it commanded respect regardless.</p><p>Returning to the nether, Ghostbur headed for the snows of the far north. Techno and Phil’s house was just over the hill from the lonely portal on the edge of the ice, with Ranboo’s not too far away. Ghostbur couldn’t ignore the ugly and uncertain structure he’d built with Tommy, now used to house an army of dogs, so he turned all of Techno’s dogs’ collars blue.</p><p>And he cried.</p><p>Phil lived here. Phil, his father, who had raised him with love and adoration, who had encouraged him to follow his dreams, who had applauded his music from a young age, coddled his ambition, stoked the fire growing inside of him. Phil, who Alivebur had chosen to be the last person he ever saw.</p><p>An awful feeling grew and grew inside Ghostbur as he stared into the empty house where Phil hadn’t been for some time. Phil was away as often as he could be, in other distant lands creating and creating until the inevitable day it all fell to pieces, at which point he would move on to the next world and start all over. Was there a point to it all? What pushed his father to keep going, keep moving, keep losing everything to the darkness? Why couldn’t he stay safe and happy in one place? Why couldn’t anyone?</p><p>Phil wouldn’t be back until something called him here. Ghostbur did his best, even though he was unable to leave the lands where he’d died. He dyed the snow blue, blue, blue as far as he could see, until the hills out to the horizon were a rolling ocean of lapis lazuli. Pure color poured from his eyes until, very suddenly, it stopped.</p><p>Techno or Ranboo would see it, and they would know who did it. And maybe, just maybe, they would pass it along to Phil.</p><p>The journey back left him feeling a little lighter, but his outburst had done almost nothing to melt the endless blue in the depths of his soul. He could drown the entire SMP in blue, if he wanted. He was tempted, some days, in the same way he’d been tempted to blow L’Manberg to bits. He wanted everyone to see. He wanted all eyes on him. He wanted to scream from the highest tower around about how none of them were built to last. Every last block here would crumble, even the almighty prison with its obsidian walls, and years and years from now, no one would remember their names. It would be worthless. It would be forgotten, and it would be cold and dark and <em> blue. </em></p><p>But he never did. His voice wasn’t so loud anymore since the loss of his lungs. His arms and legs were too frail to climb a tower. And whenever he ever got up the nerve, by the time he made it halfway there, he’d already mellowed back out to that friendly, bland version of himself that people loved. Casper the friendly ghost. Happy-go-lucky, always cheerful, always agreeable, distributor of the coveted blue that filled everyone with a warm feeling. He didn’t feel the hurt, but his blue absorbed it all and turned it into more blue, and he pushed it all down, down, down below the hate and the pain and the memories of everything he wanted to forget.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strike> <em>far</em> </strike>
</p><p> </p><p>He found himself on the bench.</p><p>Wilbur didn’t much care for the bench in any of his forms. It was Tommy’s thing, the little bench over the cliff with the tree and the jukebox and the lovely view. It was his comfort place, although, like most things, it had become anything but comforting. Ghostbur could appreciate that Tommy, after everything, still lived in his first house with his bench and his discs. He stayed where he was planted and he fought for what was his, long after even Wilbur was finished fighting. He fought and kept fighting, and he won.</p><p>But what was left to win? Who was left to care? The days were becoming thinner and thinner, and Ghostbur was becoming less and less. No one took notice of him most days, as if he wasn’t even there. Maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he dreamed it all.</p><p>But one thing he was sick of was all this stupid red everywhere. It could stand to be bluer. It could stand to fucking burn.</p><p>“Can’t sleep, huh?” a voice said behind him, and Ghostbur turned to see Tommy approaching. He was rubbing his bleary eyes, clearly having just woken up. It was nearing sunrise at that point, the moon low in the sky, ready to plunge to its inevitable end. “Me neither, big man. Me neither.”</p><p>“It should be bluer,” Ghostbur said, gesturing to the vines. He knew it didn’t make any sense, but Tommy nodded as if it did.</p><p>Tommy took a seat next to him on the bench. “I’m fucking exhausted, Wilbur. Ghostbur, I mean. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about some shit. Mind if I talk to you about it for a second? Unless you’d rather sleep.”</p><p>“I don’t sleep, Tommy.” He said it in the peppy voice, because that was the Ghostbur that Tommy expected to hear, but it felt hollow.</p><p>“Perfect.” Tommy rummaged around in his pocket and pulled out a disc. “Let’s put some music on, shall we?” He slipped it into the jukebox, and the familiar eerie notes of Far began to play, filling the air around them. “Ghostbur, you ever been down to Tubbo’s old place? The one that, uh, got burned?”</p><p>“I don’t like going there,” Ghostbur said. “It fell to the fire. It’s a dangerous place.”</p><p>“There are these great black spiderweb-looking thingies growing around it, in the bits of it that are left. Looks creepy as shit, frankly. Ever seen those?”</p><p>He nodded. He’d caught glimpses of what Tommy was talking about before. They clung to the other buildings that had burned too, and he took them as warning signs. The webs told him to stay away, so he did.</p><p>“Right, well, I asked around to see if anyone knew what was going on with those. Tubbo told me. Apparently he did some researching when he first saw them. They’re called soot tags, isn’t that interesting? Just like you, Wilbur Soot. Er, Ghostbur Soot, maybe.”</p><p>“Soot tags,” Ghostbur repeated. “How did they get there?”</p><p>“Oh, I don’t know the specifics. Some weird science thing. Tubbo said they kinda just show up in houses after fires, just naturally or some shit. Cool, right?”</p><p>“Yeah,” he agreed. “Cool.”</p><p>“It kind of reminds me of your blue,” Tommy said, taking some of the blue that Ghostbur had cupped in his hands and running it between his fingers. It stained his fingertips, and he smiled. “You know?”</p><p>“No, my blue is nothing like the soot tags. They’re creepy. They look evil.”</p><p>“No, they’re soot tags. You’re Soot, you leave tags everywhere- little bits of blue wherever you go. Get it? Soot tags.”</p><p>“That’s clever, Tommy.”</p><p>“Thanks. I was just thinking about that when I saw you moping out here. Hey, what are you moping for, anyway? Isn’t the blue supposed to make you happy?”</p><p>“Well,” Ghostbur said, “not quite. It sucks the sadness out. And some days, once it’s done with that, there’s nothing left.”</p><p>“Ah.” Tommy nodded. “Makes sense.” He took more blue in his hands, and that was when Ghostbur noticed it was spilling from his pockets at a rapid pace, drenching the bench and Tommy’s legs. The ground beneath them was already blue. “You’ve got a lot of it there, huh?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Ghostbur said. “I’m sorry.”</p><p>“It’s cool, big man. Maybe try using it on those weird vines, if you’ve got so much of it. I’m a bit sick of all the red, if I’m being honest.”</p><p>“That’s what I was thinking of before you showed up, actually. I don’t trust these vines. I think they’d be better off if they were blue.”</p><p>“You’re absolutely right. Wait, hang on, come with me.” Tommy stood and took the disc out of the jukebox, pulling Ghostbur with him down the prime path and to the spider spawner. He passed the spawner and took a left, to a giant cavern with nothing but red, red, red, as far as the eye could see. </p><p>He could hear soft drums in his ears, lurking, whispering.</p><p>“I don’t like this place, Tommy,” Ghostbur told him. Tommy ignored him and kept going, leading Ghostbur to the egg.</p><p>Ghostbur looked at the egg. It looked back.</p><p>“What do you think? Could it use some blue?” Tommy grinned, his expression suddenly mischievous. “Wouldn’t it look better? Come on, Ghostbur. It’ll be funny. Imagine the look on BadBoyHalo’s face. ‘Holy muffinfuck! Someone painted my egg blue! Was it you, Skeppy?’”</p><p>Ghostbur closed his eyes and gathered up all the blue he could muster. In his mind, he faced an impenetrable wall of red, seething with disease and spite. He recognized that spite. It was his own, mirrored before him. It belonged to him. It was his.</p><p>He took it back.</p><p>Beneath the blue he’d been building up, beneath the hate and the pain and the awful, awful memories, there it was, sitting like a pit in his stomach: the red. It was ugly, it was crawling, and it was his. It was the part of Ghostbur that Ghostbur didn’t want, and he had to turn it blue.</p><p>He hummed a little melody to himself, changing up the words a little bit. <em> I see a red egg and I want to paint it blue… no colors anymore, I want them to turn blue… </em></p><p>He got to work. </p><p>He spread the blue through the egg, which wasn’t hard, because it was his. He felt the blue draining from him, the heavy stuff that had weighed him down for so long, kept him from floating like a normal ghost could. When he’d turned the snow blue at Phil and Techno’s, it hadn’t done anything to the blue inside him, but now, right now, it was disappearing at an alarming pace. It was vanishing. He didn’t know if it’d be enough.</p><p>“Wilbur?” Tommy’s voice said from a million miles away, but Wilbur ignored him. He had an egg to destroy. </p><p>As it turned out, it was exactly enough. </p><p> </p><p>
  <strike> <em>wet hands</em> </strike>
</p><p> </p><p>Wilbur opened his eyes.</p><p>“Wilbur, are you okay?” That was…” Tommy grabbed for Wilbur’s arm, but his hand fell right through it. “Oh, shit,” he mumbled. “That’s new.”</p><p>Wilbur looked around. The first thing he noticed that there was no egg. It was gone. The next thing he noticed was that the vines had all turned yellow. </p><p>No more blue, no more red. The only thing left was yellow. It made a weird sort of sense- without blue, without red, yellow was the only thing left. </p><p>It was Wilbur’s favorite color, too. It always had been. Or at least, it was now. He wasn’t sure it mattered.</p><p>“Wilby?” Tommy asked. His voice had gone quiet, pleading. He looked afraid. Wilbur realized he was floating, several feet above the ground. </p><p>“Tommy,” he said, “I think I did it.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Tommy said, looking around at the now-golden vines. “Do you think they’re all like this?”</p><p>“They are.” Wilbur didn’t need to check. He knew. “You can break them, if you want. It’ll be safe now. You’ll all be safe now.”</p><p>“Why are you, like, a real ghost now?”</p><p>"I don't know. It's not on purpose."</p><p>"I didn't mean for you to do- whatever that was," Tommy said. "I just meant for you to throw a bit of blue on the egg and called it a day. It'd be a laugh, that's all. I didn't expect it to be gone."</p><p>"It was mine," he tried to explain. "The egg was mine. It was red and Ghostbur was blue, and Wilbur is yellow."</p><p>Tommy nodded. The pieces made sense to Wilbur now, even if he didn't like them. Nor did he like how they fit together, but he wouldn't have to for long.</p><p>Wilbur felt himself slipping further and further away. He didn’t have much time left, he realized. This was it. </p><p>“Tommy,” Wilbur said, “I think I have to go.”</p><p>“Oh,” Tommy said. “Well, I’ll miss you, big man. But if you really have to go, I think it was past time anyway.”</p><p>“It was,” Wilbur agreed. “Can- can you tell them I love them?”</p><p>Tommy didn’t need to ask who he meant. “Of course I will, Wilbur,” he said. “I don’t really know where Fundy’s gone, to be honest, but I’ll try to hunt him down.”</p><p>“And Tommy-” Wilbur began to really feel the lack of air in his lungs as he was dragged further up- “I love you. I’m proud of you. You’ve done so well.”</p><p>Tommy’s eyes filled with tears. “They’re all going to see this tomorrow and they’ll remember you, and maybe we’ll have a real funeral, and I’m going to write books about you, so many books, and I’ll play Cat and Mellohi in your honor. And we’ll all go visit Dream in prison and yell, ‘Suck it green boyyyyyy!’ And- and-” He stopped to breathe. “And, well, I love you too.”</p><p>That was the last thing Wilbur heard.</p><p> </p><p>He was home.</p>
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